Whenever the need arises to make a natural element white or whiter (such as in portraits of people), it’s tempting to set the foreground color to white and reach for the brush tool. This works if applied with care, but it’s easier to achieve a more realistic effect using other Photoshop tools. Here, a small amount of whitening applied to the model’s teeth and eyes will lift the whole image. PhotoshopSupport has a quick tutorial on how to whiten the eyes and teeth of your subject in Photoshop.
Category: Resources
Free paper texture pack available for download
PSDTuts has a great pack of 10 paper textures for use in your next Web project available for download. Each paper texture image is 1280×960 pixels, suitable for any Web design needs you may have.
50 Free plaid-pattern swatches for Illustrator
ColorBurned is offering 50 plaid-patterned swatches for Adobe Illustrator users, free to download. Plaid patterns can have countless uses for fashion design or textiles, graphic or web design, package design and more. What makes this set so great is that each seamless vector pattern has been converted to a swatch. Swatches are great because of the flexibility that they provide. You can perform a number of transformations on them including scale and rotate without affecting the shape of the object they are applied to. A brief tutorial on how to install swatches into Adobe Illustrator is included. Scroll down below all the preview images for the download link.
200+ free grunge Photoshop brushes
The Grunge look is all the rage right now, so don’t miss out on this huge collection of free grunge brushes for Adobe Photoshop at YouTheDesigner. Many of these brushes are of very high resolution, making them perfect for Web and print design work.
30 beautiful Photoshop illustration tutorials
Top-notch Photoshop tutorials sites offer 30 beautiful illustration tutorials for Adobe Photoshop users. While you may not have the need to create a shiny green apple any time soon, the techniques used in all of these tutorials will surely give you a better grasp of what is possible.
Illustrator Gradient Mesh tool quick tutorial
The folks over at aiVault have a great intro tutorial on Adobe Illustrator’s Gradient Mesh tool. The Gradient Mesh tool is used to create a single multicolored object on which colors can flow in different directions , the color transitions achieved are smooth running from one color to another.
Add sparks to your Photoshop image
Adding a little spark to your image is simple with Grinder Sparks, a free high-resolution Photoshop brush set from Nathan Brown at Room122. I love Photoshop brushes because they’re so versatile, and I can see that this brush collection offers many possibilities. The 8 brushes in the set are all of high quality, and large enough for most print resolution uses.
Create a hand-held fan effect from your favorite image
PanosFX Fan is a complex Photoshop action that will create a hand-held fan using any landscape oriented image. The action creates 20 slats, making use of semi-transparent layers and a number of decorative elements. I used the small image to the right to create the final image you see above. The action not only gives you a straight on view of the fan, but two perspective options as well. The results are fantastic, which is no surprise considering how many great Photoshop Actions PanosFX has to offer.
Free world maps in vector format
Looking for world maps in vector format? Look no further than this collection of free vector world maps from WebResourcesDepot! Several different styles of maps are included on the list, from standard line-art to stylized version as seen above.
Free vector art envelope icons
YouTheDesigner recently released a new set of envelope icons in vector format, free for download and use in your commercial projects. The collection is of superb quality and detail, and because they’re Illustrator files, easily editable to suit your needs.